‘No, don’t go inside me,’ she said, ‘I’m not ready yet.’
That was a lie. She was always ready right away, especially with him.
He hovered above her, naked. He was too ready, but he didn’t know that. He wanted to move, conquer, totally focused on his cock. He conquered at his own expense. With her and everyone before her. Goal-oriented, he always achieved the same – painfully boring – result. An orgasm for both people involved, sometimes even simultaneously. But something, somewhere, remained unstirred.
‘Stay right there, with just the tip of your cock … do that again, as gently as you can, there’s nothing I love more than that – and in that moment, there was nothing she loved more than that. The secret to a successful lie – and the risk – is that you begin to believe it. He did as she asked, even though she could tell he wanted to thrust deeper. There was a part of her he didn’t understand, and that was the part he took his directions from.
She’d seen in him the partner that he would one day become. She saw the apple orchard they didn’t have yet. And it turned her on. She was good at that – making pictures. Spirit-power.
He continued with the almost imper-ceptible movement.
‘Sooo good,’ she said encouragingly,
‘I just want this …’
For years she’d played the role of the free spirit, until she’d become one. There was a time when she manipulated other people, and by extension herself. She used sex to commit and she used sex to break free. Now she only gave herself when she really wanted to. She believed – and accepted – that her most profound sexual experiences were already behind her.
‘Just the tip … my clit … just this can make me … come.’ The magic word. That prospect – always more elusive than he might have wished – turned him on.
She had to come up with something. She’d tried to tell him about the night at the temple, the retreat, the workshop. About the adventures, mistakes, revelations. But he didn’t believe her. Vaguely admiring and half-jealous, he believed those types of experiences couldn’t possibly pertain to him. Coming with your whole body, currents of energy, not shooting your wad – all of that was improbable and nebulous, at most something for freaks and yogis, not for him.
He paused for a moment – ‘Don’t stop,’ she said – he shifted a knee and went back to doing what he was doing.
Knowing he would go on, she was able to open herself fully. Beneath her pleasure was the additional pleasure of knowing that, in serving her, he was getting himself more and more worked up. That, without even realising it, he was slowly unfurling his own consciousness.
‘I like it when you touch yourself, too,’ she said.
He immediately obeyed her command. He gently jerked himself off and kept carefully caressing her with the tip of his cock.
He didn’t seem to suspect that she was more focused on him than on herself. If he realised that, he’d take her like he was used to – that is, he’d give himself away, his abundance, largely without even being aware of it.
Right now he was enjoying it more than she was, but she was fully immersed in her own pleasure, or at least she pretended to be. And he loved it. Insatiable touch-hunger.
In a flash she sensed the bed he had yet to build, saw them whitewashing the ceiling, pottering around in the yard. And she dimly registered the injustice of all those mundane things – things she’d proved she was capable of ages ago – having to be repeated again and again. No one should have to mop a floor more than once in their life. Admin – just the once and then you’re good to go. And then you’d have all the time in the world to play, improvise, learn new languages, meet new people. To remain the open channel through which ideas and images come flowing into the spirit, only to leave your hands again as finished
projects.
He was still repeating the same movement, in the air now, hovering a few inches above her mound of Venus. The ghost of touch – she could still feel it even if he wasn’t touching her anymore, that’s how turned on she was.
‘My love … what’s happening,’ he said.
Fear, jealousy, pain, all the pangs that are part of an intimate relationship – she’d learned to accept them and let them go. She’d also gotten good at letting go of pictures. Superpower.
‘Go on,’ she said, running her fingernails down his back, his neck. She watched him burn. Spiritstuff grows from lovefuel burning up.
She wanted her friends to love him too, because the apple orchard was full, and beyond it were the cluster pines and the friendly dune grasses. Ecstasy. The human body is a means to ecstasy.
‘Will you go inside me?’ she asked, and she knew those words would push him over the edge.
He straightened his back above her. His pecs tightened, his chest flushed red. Tremors and half-spasms ripped through him, from his tailbone to the tip of his head. She rubbed up from his belly.
‘This … is impossible,’ he said.
A wave, around her, from head to toe, not a snake or jellyfish, but a tunnel of water with a succession of eddies – she could see them when she closed her eyes.
He barked, tried to choke out some words, but all that came out was growl. He thumped on his chest, rubbed his neck, the back of his head.
‘Here …’ he said, ‘and here and here.’
The wave that crashed around her contracted into a point in the middle of her forehead. A soft white glimmer.
He raised his arms, arched his back, proudly towering above her. A single white drop, perfectly round, on the tip of his cock.
‘This … is impossible,’ he choked out.
Suddenly she was sure that there were things far beyond her imagination.
He collapsed on top of her.
‘Pearl,’ she said to him.
‘Oyster,’ he said to her.
She felt him lying motionless on top of her – pearlbody, soulseed. This is what it feels like when someone wakes up, she thought, after decades of sleep.